


a dream of green places

by Larrant



Series: Bodhi & Galen works [1]
Category: Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel - James Luceno, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Spoilers for Rogue One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 00:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8868964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larrant/pseuds/Larrant
Summary: Bodhi and Galen. Not quite a history.





	

**Author's Note:**

> If tags weren't enough: SPOILERS, BEWARE

 

Bodhi Rook had graduated from the Academy with highest honours. He was everything his instructors wanted him to be- he had keen eyes and sharp senses and an intuition that was almost too intuitive to be true (he had been an orphan, a relic of the clone wars- he was the perfect example of the Imperial model).

And then they realized he couldn’t fight in a battle.

(he got cold feet they said, he was a coward, he was a scaredy-cat who couldn’t even pull a trigger)

He was sent in disgrace to Eadu.

And. That, well, maybe that was the end of him. He’d live out his days there, probably, on that backwater planet. Maybe they’d even promote him to an administrative position once he’d been there long enough. Maybe.

Bodhi… doesn’t mind. He’s never been ambitious, per se, he’s just a product of the Empire, and he wants to serve as best as he can- he’s only ever been able to believe, and so he believes, with all his heart. However he can repay the Empire, he will.

He goes to Eadu, and he’s assigned to overseeing Galen Erso.

 

* * *

 

Something Bodhi realizes days in: Galen Erso- the head engineer- he’s fascinating. Bodhi’s never seen anyone like him before, the man works with a zeal Bodhi’s never seen before, a dedication he admires. The man gets absorbed into his work sometimes and he can stay writing for hours upon hours into the night.

He’s awed, just watching the man at his work. Maybe standing around for hours on end is boring for the others, but Bodhi has so much to watch, so much to take in, and _everything_ is breathtaking.

 

* * *

 

“-you there.” Bodhi starts as someone points in his direction. As the head engineer points in his direction. “Can you get me the tablet from that desk?”

He’s pointing at the table Bodhi’s standing next to, and Bodhi blinks, before he grabs the tablet- it should be the right one, right? There’s only one on the desk- and walks over to hand it to the man.

His legs are stiff and sore, and he’s rather grateful for the chance to walk.

“What’s your name.” asks Galen Erso, pausing to look at him as he accepts the tablet, and Bodhi’s heart skips the barest beat when gray eyes meet his own.

“Bodhi,” he replies, after a moment, almost but not stammering, “Bodhi Rook.”

Galen Erso smiles, and the expression looks so at home on the man’s face that Bodhi finds himself smiling back.

 

* * *

 

The thing about Galen Erso is that he’s kind.

It’s strange, in a way Bodhi can’t quite explain. He watches the man, sometimes, because he doesn’t really have much else to do. Galen Erso is always… always soft-spoken, always quiet, maybe withdrawn, but comfortable around the people he spends time with. He helps people, when they get something wrong. He never shouts at anyone, or raises his voice. Bodhi’s never seen him get angry.

He wants to be like Galen, Bodhi thinks, the man is truly admirable.

 

* * *

 

“Bodhi, yes? Bodhi Rook.”

He blinks, and hearing his name come from Galen Erso’s lips is more natural than anything. “I, yes,” he replies, and almost for a moment says- ‘you’re Galen Erso right?’- even though he knows who Galen Erso is already.

The man smiles at him- and Bodhi is already memorizing that smile, the curve of the man’s lips that is so strangely riveting- “Could you help me with these?”

 

* * *

 

“So, you’re interested in engineering?”

After around an hour of helping Galen move stuff, the man asks it of him suddenly, and Bodhi blinks, stacks the crate in his arms on top of the rest.

“Oh,” he says, suddenly realizing Galen must have noticed Bodhi watching his work, and he hadn’t been as inconspicuous as he’d thought. His cheeks heat a little, embarrassed. “Uhm. I- I just think it’s fascinating,” he says, truthfully. “It’s… all those components coming together, so many things that were designed and created and you put them all together and it’s uhm, breathtaking.”

He doesn’t even know if what he just said makes any sense.

But Galen laughs, and at least Bodhi knows that whatever he said it didn’t displease Galen. “There’s that,” the man agrees, with a faint smile that hides something else behind it, but Bodhi doesn’t really know what that is.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi starts helping Galen around more. The people around the base start to refer to him as Galen’s new assistant.

To some extent, Bodhi thinks it's quite true, but on the other hand it’s something he enjoys doing- talking with Galen, finding out how all of these things work and fit together and how each component is made.

He finds himself enjoying every day as it comes- it’s a wholly new and unexpected sensation, and it’s certainly a welcome one.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, when Galen is sitting there, Bodhi next to him, he will talk. Just- just random things. Things about his home planet, things about his daughter, his life, a lot of things, and anything.

He hears about Galen’s daughter a lot. Jyn. It’s a lovely name, he tells Galen at one point, and the man laughs, agrees.

Bodhi hears about the time she had dressed up as a bantha for Life Day, how the school had put on a play once and she had been the main character and she had been so proud when the play finished and tripped off the stage as well. He hears and commits everything to his memory, listens to how Galen’s voice weaves in the air and commits that to memory as well.

He- sometimes he’ll wish, guiltily, guiltily, that he could have been a part of their family as well, the family he’s heard so much of. Sometimes he’ll dream about meeting Jyn, the girl he’s heard so much about, the girl with bright eyes and a wide smile and whose laughter could light up a room.

And just sometimes- sometimes he’ll dream about waking in the morning and walking into a kitchen and seeing his family eating, laughing, talking at the table. They might pull up a seat for him, he might sit down and then he might be at home, his sibling stealing his oatmeal and he’d let her with a laugh. And, well, if that family just look a lot like what Galen describes _his_ as, then well, that’s just a product of Bodhi’s terrible imagination.

He’s never had a family after all, an orphan, an unwanted child who was left to grow up in the cold- but even now, even now. He thinks Galen might be something close to that notion of _family_.

 

* * *

 

He listens a lot. He listens and sometimes he looks at the plans of the Weapon, and he finds a quiet unease growing in his heart.

It’s just a whisper at first, a quiet quiet whisper. But it starts… nagging at him, threading doubt through his mind.

It’s not a weapon of war, he thinks at one point, and it’s a thought that occurs with sudden clarity, a sense of hauntedness that overcomes him. It’s a weapon of destruction.

 

* * *

 

“Have you ever been to Alderaan?” Galen asks him.

Bodhi shakes his head.

Galen smiles, “It’s beautiful, you should visit there sometime. There are mountains and fields stretching far into the distance, and the sky is a beautiful blue.”

Bodhi listens, and sometimes he wants to say that hearing it from Galen is already enough, that he could thrive and conjure up worlds in Galen’s words alone, and it’s all he would ever need.

But he thinks- if he ever has the chance, he will go to Alderaan after all. He’ll visit the temples on Tython, the railroads high on Corellia- he’ll go to all these places and maybe by then he can go there with Galen, too.

 

* * *

 

“It’s wrong,” he tells Galen one day. A confession for a confession, a secret for a secret. “I… this weapon. It’s _wrong_.”

As soon as it comes out of his lips he flinches. _It’s wrong_. It sounds like such a- such a definite sentence- he had wanted to say something, something maybe like ‘I don’t know, is it right’, ‘it doesn’t feel right’, ‘why are we building it’- something that wouldn’t sound like treason, like the words that had spilled so carelessly from his mouth. But he thinks all of his thoughts might sound like treason, if he voiced them aloud.

But… he doesn’t regret it. His hands are clenched and his fingernails are biting into his palm, and he’s going to be brave, he’s not going to say anything else, he’ll wait for whatever reply Galen gives him- because Galen knows more about this than Bodhi does, Galen knows a lot of things and he’s like a teacher to Bodhi.

Maybe he’s hoping Galen will say he’s wrong, he’s hoping the man will put a stop to these treacherous thoughts running through Bodhi’s head. He’ll tell him why the Empire is right, why this Weapon has to be built, all the _ifs_ and _whys_ that Bodhi just hasn’t yet understood, is too stupid to understand.

“I know,” Galen says, kindly, “I know.”

 

* * *

 

Sometimes he dreams and sometimes he dreams of warm brown eyes and a gentle laugh and a low voice that breathes in his ear, a warmth that he’s always wished to know and-

He wakes, and is ashamed of himself.

 

* * *

 

“Bodhi.”

“-yes?”

“Do you remember what I told you, about Alderaan?”

“It’s uhm- it’s green, isn’t it. With tall mountains and tall grass, and they stretch all the way into the horizon. And- there are rivers running, and creeks and lakes and oceans.” He finds himself smiling at the thought- blue water and green grass and a never ending expanse of it.

“... Yes, yes it is.”

He blinks a little, at the wistfulness in Galen’s voice, the nostalgia. Galen’s looking at him, right at him, and it’s as if he’s suddenly making a decision- though Bodhi can’t see behind Galen’s gray, gray eyes, that seem as deep as oceans sometime.

“What is it?” He ventures to ask, after a moment.

Galen chuckles. It’s warm and low and deep, and Bodhi commits this new one all to memory, “If you ever visit,” he says, wistfully, “Go to the mountains for me. There’s always snow at the top, and if you stand right at the peak of a tall one, you can see for miles around, everything beneath your feet.”

Bodhi somehow- he doesn’t think he will, doesn’t think he’ll be able to do that, to go to Alderaan, but he nods anyway because it is a good dream to have, and someday he just might. He wants to.

 

* * *

 

“Take this,” Galen tells him, soft and kind, and something urgent there as well- and there’s something in his eyes that rivets Bodhi right to the spot. “Take this to a man named Saw Gerrera. Tell him I sent you.”

He clutches the stick to his chest, breathing in like his instructors had taught him, trying hard not to hyperventilate.

“What about you?” He manages to ask, after everything else, after everything.

Galen’s smile is faint, tight at the edges. “I’ll be fine.”

And Bodhi, because it’s all he’s ever done, all he’s ever been able to do, he believes.

 

* * *

 

 _Galen, this is for you_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
